


Pono ʻo au ke hele

by mohinikapuahi



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M, coda S02E20 Ha'alele
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-11
Updated: 2012-04-11
Packaged: 2017-11-03 11:20:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mohinikapuahi/pseuds/mohinikapuahi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda S02E20 Ha'alele.  Why doesn't Steve take Danny's calls?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pono ʻo au ke hele

Slumped in the driver’s seat of his rental car, Steve scanned the house he was surveilling slowly before he pulled his phone from his pocket, dialled his voicemail and pressed the phone to his ear. The phone was both a salvation and a curse. Before he’d boarded a flight out of Tokyo he’d had to set it to silent, Danny was like a dog with a bone, he kept calling and calling, relentless and tenacious. Steve could see him in his mind, dialling Steve’s number whenever he had a spare moment, not always leaving a message, but letting him know that he was there, that he was thinking about him, that he was worried. Keeping him tethered when Steve was self aware enough to know that he was drifting away, the way only Danny could.

The first day, there had been text messages and voicemails, angry at first, and really Steve couldn’t blame him. For all his bravado, for all the medals on his chest Steve just couldn’t go and face Danny to say goodbye. So he’d left him a note. It had taken Steve hours, and what felt like a ream of paper before he had something that he pronounced acceptable. How it was acceptable he didn’t know. He couldn’t tell Danny what he wanted to say, he couldn’t lay that on his partner in a letter, not when he hadn’t had the guts to say it to his face. Sure he said it in other ways a million times a day, he’s fairly certain that the man in the moon could read it in his eyes every time he looked at Danny, but never in actual words.

Steve shook his head to clear the new layer of regrets from his mind as he listened to Danny’s voice, angry and hissing threats at him. He knew them by heart now he’d played them so much. This was the eleventh message from the first day, Danny was still angry but he could hear the hurt in his voice as well. They were partners, he needed to have his back, needed to be there, but Steve couldn’t risk that. It wasn’t that Danny couldn’t look after himself. He could, sometimes he looked out for the both of them, and better than Steve could. But Steve couldn’t lose him, he’d lost so much, so many people that meant everything to him. His mother, his father, now Joe, Steve couldn’t, wouldn’t survive losing Danny. But more importantly then himself or even Danny, there was Grace, Steve wouldn’t be party to giving her the life he currently lived. He’d had his parents stolen from him and he knew what that did to a child. He wouldn’t be responsible for Grace losing her father.

His eyes were closed by the time the seventeenth message started. This was the one that meant more to him than anything else. The voicemail that almost made him return the call. Almost made him give up his search. Almost. Danny wasn’t angry anymore, he was hurt and worried, Steve could hear everything that was always unspoken between them in his words.

“Please, be careful.”

“Please. I know you. Don’t let this be like North Korea.”

“Please come home to us. “

“To Grace”

“To Me."

"We need you."

"I need you.”

Steve mentally kicked himself for being an asshole and doing this to Danny. For putting that crack in his voice that Steve had only ever heard associated with Grace. But John McGarrett had set this juggernaut in motion and Steve couldn’t let it roll on any longer. He wouldn’t lose anyone else. He wouldn’t let anyone he loved lose anyone else either. He wouldn’t go home until this was done. Until they could all move forward with their lives.

It wouldn’t stop until he made it stop, and if that meant that he had to lose a little part of his soul hearing Danny’s voice breaking a little more with each voicemail, then so be it.

He’d rather lose part of his soul than lose Danny.


End file.
